Hope in the Wrong Things

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Southeast Christian ChurchSoutheast Christian Church

Dec 20, 2022

When John wrote his Gospel, we are able to look historically at what was going on in the church at the time that was causing people to lose hope. These circumstances are why John writes his Gospel in the way and language that he does. First, in the nineties, when John wrote this book of the Bible, there was a whisper of theology sweeping through the church where people were denying the incarnation. This meant that people were suggesting that God never really came to earth as a man. Simply put: There were people that were beginning to believe that Jesus was just more of an incredible prophet, but he was not really God who took on flesh.

Secondly, there was also a way of thinking that was moving through the church where they were denying the saving significance of the death and the resurrection of Jesus. They just started downplaying or denying what death and the resurrection of Jesus truly meant in comparison to everything else and what it meant for them now, not just historically.

John, as a seasoned pastor, is seeing the people of the church start to buy into the fact that Jesus might not have really ever been fully God and fully man, and people begin to downplay the importance that the cross and the resurrection really had in their lives and what it meant for them going forward. In turn, John was also watching the way hope was starting to leak out of the church, watching anxiety rise among the Christians, and people spending all of their energy and time on things that won't ever matter. And so, John sits down write a letter to that will tell the story of Jesus in a way that, by the time I'm done, nobody that read the letter was going question whether Jesus was really God with flesh on and nobody was going to ponder the significance of the cross and the resurrection.

Reflection/Discussion Questions: Do you ever struggle to believe in the incarnation or the significance of the cross like the early church? What impact does this have on your hope?

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